


Wakeful Hours

by dem_hips



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M, Universe Alteration, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 00:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4243155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dem_hips/pseuds/dem_hips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the unimportant heart of an unimportant town, a familiar face appears.  In a slightly gentler world, two sworn brothers meet again after nine years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wakeful Hours

_-a breaking of the ice/how i fit into you-_

There was nothing exceptional about this tavern.  The atmosphere rose just loud enough to stir itself into frothy, bland white noise, the ale was mediocre at best, and as far as Sabo could tell the wait staff was populated by people whose particular brand of pragmatism meant their hopes and dreams extended no further than the edges of their service trays.  Outside, the waves crashed at the same timbre as in any other port town, and the air was peppered with sea salt like a stew at the hands of some unadventurous chef.  This place had not been blunted by past tragedy nor whittled to a point in expectation that someday the world would treat it as its axis and spin, briefly, on its prepared tip.  As Sabo drank his satisfyingly tasteless drink and ate food identifiable by neither taste nor texture, he sat in the shadows of the furthest corner from the door and tried to color himself and the hat resting beside him on the bench in the same dull shades as everything else around him.

There was no reason why anyone of any import would be passing through this place.  If someone thought just long enough about that, they were bound to come to the conclusion that such anonymity would make this _the_ best location for someone like him to hide.  Sabo found himself holding his breath on occasion, as if that would help maintain the diaphanous film between obscurity and conspicuity.  It was, sometimes, the best shield he had at his disposal.

His meal finished, he sat in silence, nursing a second flagon of ale and watching the other patrons from beneath thick blonde bangs.  Before this trip, he had never even heard of this town, standing in the middle of nowhere on an unimportant coast of an unimportant sea.  He had been here for three days now, sitting, watching.  Waiting.  The occasional miscalculated bill had punctuated the otherwise dull, dreary sentence of his residence; a single short-lived bar brawl served as its only exclamation point.  In two more days, Sabo would leave this place as monotonous as he had found it, and as much as he was looking forward to returning to Dragon’s side and the action to be found there, he felt sure a miniscule part of him would miss the easy, steady current that ran beneath this pit of a town.

The woman who had started the brawl in question just two days ago was now chatting amicably enough with the man with whose words she had once taken offense.  Sabo’s lips curled into a brief smile around the edge of his flagon.  That was just the kind of town this was.  Change itself had been made constant, tempers and temperatures and tides weaving so evenly about a center line that they always averaged out to zero.  It was like no other place he’d ever been, and despite its utter normality, Sabo found it fascinating.  He ducked his head to pull in another gulp of tasteless ale and sighed into his half-emptied cup.  On the other side of the place, the same old bell tinkled the same old way, announcing the arrival of the next patron in a constant stream of patrons who sat and ate and drank and lived the same old lives.

“You got room for twelve, old man?”

“Plenty of room for paying customers!” the barkeep called back.  The newcomers answered with a generous and enthusiastic clink of beri, and with a slightly larger smile Sabo swallowed another gulp.

“Then we’re all in luck!”

A choking diner was definitely too exciting an occurrence to not attract attention.  Sabo did as much of his sputtering and coughing as possible inside his flagon, so that by the time he lowered it as slowly as he could back to the surface of the table, the harsh noises of clearing his throat got lost beneath the cheering of the large new party still surging in through the front doors.  Beneath a fringe of curls painted in the grime of the tavern, Sabo’s eyes widened on one of them, standing straight and bold near the front of the pack.

Briefly, every single hard-learned word of training he’d ever endured slipped from his brain.  Even his choking fit sat forgotten outside of his own head.  Sabo stared.

The person standing there was more a man now than he was the boy whose freckled smirk came to mind as Sabo’s gaze settled on him from across the crowd.  Limbs had lengthened, muscles had established themselves in previously barren territory, and the sun had blanketed years’ worth of golden color over skin more permanently marked by ink etched into a well-known visage.  But that smirk and those freckles had not changed.  Much like this town, Sabo was sure they never could.

The large group with him shuffled past to a table on a far diagonal from his own.  Only then did Sabo remember himself and sink his gaze back beneath the lip of his flagon, but he let the stale ale slosh around in the bottom and partook of no more.  Against even the darkness within the deep, mostly empty cup, he squeezed his eyes shut.  He had finally found the most perfectly bland place in the seven seas to maintain his anonymity until his transport back to Dragon was to show up, and one wrong move would dye the off-white pages of this town an indelible, irrevocable yellow brighter than the sun itself.

  _Fuck._

* * *

 

“Then we’re all in luck!” Ace cried, inviting boisterous roars from his crewmates and the bar staff alike.  The Whitebeard Pirates had plenty of money to spend, and this tavern seemed to have plenty of ale to sell, and when one such party could meet the other on amicable terms, the whole place had something to cheer about.

From behind him, the hands of his crewmates were steering him helpfully in the direction of the largest table near the back.  Ace had never been to this tavern before, but many of them had.  A place that didn’t bother itself to pick and choose its patrons was always a friendly perch for a pirate, and as Ace had learned quickly over the past year, there were a distinct few and particular dives in the world that didn’t have room for Edward Newgate and his crew at their tables.

The chatter that had rose up around their large party quickly fell off again into a steady, dull roar.  With their captain and most of the more eye-catching members of their brotherhood behind them in town somewhere, or left on the _Moby Dick_ , they’d made little impression on the jaded eyes and lips of this tavern.  Ace dragged his hat from his head.  Placed on the bench beside him, it left a mess of black hair and a blunt, satisfied grin behind.  That was fine.  He’d always found food and booze more pleasant without the impending annoyance of an unwelcome distraction.

Rounds of meat and ale were ordered, and the Whitebeard Pirates made their own currents of noise beneath the tavern’s usual clink of flagons and platters and bones.   Ace listened absently to his crewmates’ chatter, putting a word or two in when necessary, but he mostly held to himself, and they let him.  They were used to that.

As the conversation nearest him turned for the eighth time that day to Vista’s newest sword acquisition, Ace felt his attention wandering to the vague crashing of waves outside, the shuffling of chairs and bodies inside, and the chattering that buzzed beneath the surface of it all that made up the fact and fabric of this unimportant tavern in its even less important town.  To Ace’s right, a hunched figure sneezed into his own empty flagon.  To his left, a woman was hissing and shaking out her right hand in an overly exaggerated manner.

“Still smarts from the other night,” she was explaining to the man to her right.  Glancing over, Ace saw the words escape lips curled into an amused smile. “Ya got a hard skull on ya, Jed.”

The man beside her had the grace to share in at least some of her amusement.  “Well, no one told ya ya had to go ‘n try ‘n break my jaw, Stenna,” he chuckled, rubbing his purple-bruised chin gingerly.

“ _You_ did, moron,” returned Stenna fondly, “when ya went ‘n badmouthed Stodd the other night!”  The two of them shared an unusually easy laugh that had Ace grinning as he bit into his meat.  “Just ‘cause my brother ain’t know the way ‘round a fishin’ rig don’t mean ya gotta rib ‘im for it, yah?”

Ace paused, with a bite of unidentifiable flesh pinched between his teeth.  Her voice had gotten just the slightest bit harder just then.

“That so, that so, Stenna,” Jed agreed quickly, his hands raised in surrender. “Stodd’s got ‘is other gifts, ‘e does, sure.  Ain’t ‘is worth-measure, fishin’ rigs.”

“That so.”

With her final syllable whittled to a blunted point, Stenna nodded deeply to herself and flashed her easy smile once more before hiding it behind her ale.  Only then did Ace follow through with his delayed bite, and he leaned back restlessly as he chewed, trying not to reserve too much thought for either the two people sitting now as amicably as could be to his left nor the character of the food in his mouth.  Around him, his crewmates were emptying piles of platters and clusters of flagons at a time, their chatter grown indistinguishable from the undercurrent of the tavern.  Patrons rose and sat in an endless cycle.  The hunched figure with the sneeze had stood up to join their number, pulling a hat from the bench beside him.

Ace swallowed hard.  What was left of his last mouthful glommed painfully down his throat and sat heavy in the bottom of his stomach.  His fingers grasped the edge of the table to keep himself upright despite the speed at which he took to his feet.  Before he knew it, he had left it and his crew and his own hat behind to pursue the one that had flashed through his vision only briefly--but had flashed through his memory so often the last several years that he could recite its dimensions and the number of stitches around the brim off the top of his head.

“Ace?”

“Hey--”

“What’s the--”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

* * *

“Just ‘cause my brother ain’t know the way ‘round a fishin’ rig don’t mean ya gotta rib ‘im for it, yah?”

Sabo pulled his face out of his flagon and sniffed, rubbing his still tingling nose against his sleeve.  The air in the tavern had changed, just slightly.  To anyone who’d spent longer than a couple of days here, perhaps it wouldn’t feel that way.  For all they cared, in a minute or an hour or a week, the air would change right back, leaving no one the wiser.

But for someone who was yet unused to the strange, eternal ebb and flow of this place, for someone who had grown as accustomed to this new air as many of these patrons had grown to their unceasingly changing lives, Sabo felt it like a snap.  An anxious spike forced its way through his insides.  He’d thought it would be safer to sit still and wait until the other had gone.  He hadn’t counted on the pressure he exuded, the squirming of each of Sabo’s own nerves in response.  Those hadn’t quite been trained out of him, not yet.

For a minute or two, he held his hat beneath the table, waiting for the right moment.  The man he watched out of the corner of his eye fell into a light, stagnant sort of pose as his jaws slowly processed his food, an image Sabo had seen so often in the past and in weak moments of memory.  Clutching his hat brim, he held his breath and rose to his feet, as smoothly as possible.

It took three steps for his retreat to be intercepted.

_Where the hell do you think you’re going?_

The words echoed more in his mind than they did vibrate in his ears.  He stared down at the golden hand pressed to his chest, while his own curled the brim of his hat in his fist.

“I _said_ , where the _hell_ do you think you’re _going_!”

Those were real words.  Real words, in a real voice, and they gripped Sabo’s gaze like claws and yanked it up to the freckled, furious face inches from his own.

Sabo forgot how to breathe.

“ _What the fuck--!_ ”

“Ace!”

“Ace, calm down!”

“What are you--”

Sabo’s chest ached with the need for air.  Somewhere in the haze of his vision outside of the face at its center, there were people there, calling his name, trying to hold him back.  But his hand had curled in the fabric of Sabo’s vest, his grip unbreakable.

Sabo’s lungs swelled.  He took Ace’s wrist in his hand, his own grip just as insistent.  “Not now.”

“ _Fuck that_!”  The hand tangled in his clothing pulled him closer, just as the arms threaded through Ace’s attempts to hold him back, and Sabo could almost feel heat exuding from his skin.  “You’re going to tell me where you got that hat!   _Right_ now!”

The expression on Ace’s face hadn’t fallen.  In fact, the intensity of his fury only grew the longer Sabo struggled to maintain his own, to keep from faltering into helpless laughter.  His lips still twitched as he continued to gaze across the minute gap between himself and Ace, but it was the feeling of all other eyes in the tavern now on them like a heavy, stifling coat that kept his expression stern in the end.

“You’re making a scene.”

“I don’t _give a fuck_ what I’m--”

“Outside.”  Sabo forced the hand down from his chest, but he kept his grip, and the focus of his gaze.  “Now.”

Ace’s teeth were clenched so tightly Sabo feared they might shatter.  Behind him, his crewmates were slower on the uptake, still clinging to Ace’s arms uncertainly.

“Ace, you know this guy?”

The speaker was a tall, sleepy-eyed man, with a tattoo emblazoned across his chest that matched the one marking his crewmate’s back.  He was the only one who remained sure of his grip, still tight on Ace’s shoulder while the rest of him sagged in an easy slouch.

“N--”

The half-bitten syllable brought Sabo’s attention back on the man whose wrist he still had in his hand.  The sound of denial had Ace’s teeth still clenched, but his grimace was coming undone the longer he stared ahead.

And the longer he stared ahead, the better a look everyone in this tavern was getting of the two of them.

“Outside,” Sabo hissed, and the urgency in his voice, if nothing else, seemed to do the trick.  A potent sigh parted Ace’s lips.  He untensed his shoulders, and as if their minds were working in tandem, his taller crewmate’s grip slackened.  Following his lead, the rest peeled off like loose skin from a fruit.

“Don’t worry,” was all Ace left his crewmates with, in a voice like embers left over from an impatient fire.  He didn’t even spare them a glance as he headed for the door, one step behind and to Sabo’s left.

When Ace and his crewmates had entered the tavern and closed the door behind them, they’d shut the daylight and its accompanying warmth outside.  Now, the sun was slipping closer and closer to kiss the horizon, casting a faint pink glow over the near-empty streets and leaving behind the promise of an early-spring chill.  Sabo led the way around the building, silent as he attempted to shrug off the attention of the tavern patrons and to swallow the pounding of his heart that had reached all the way up into his throat.  The alleyway to the building’s left was wide and lined with stone, peppered with all manner of old, discarded kitchen equipment, and mottled with shadows and bands of dingy light.  It smelled of fish and burnt wood and the dampness of the sea.  If Sabo risked closing his eyes for just a second, the image of the Gray Terminal would fall easily over this place like a filter.

Ace’s wrist slipped from his grasp.

The kick came lightning-fast, aimed for his stomach.  Sabo had only time to back off a step and a half; Ace’s foot collided with his left side, a familiar pressure he remembered all too well from their younger days.  But if he hadn’t moved at all, he’d be gasping in the dirt.

Sabo swerved.  There was no time to consider how far Ace had come since they’d last sparred, years and lifetimes ago.  He’d grown stronger too, and now as Ace’s foot landed solidly to support himself for another go, Sabo slipped in through the tiny gap he always used to leave and rammed an elbow up at the place where his ribs met in his unprotected chest.

With half a moment until impact, Ace parried, his arm turning aside the blow before reaching out to the edge of the alley.  A length of pipe, worn and rusted with age and use, found its way into his hand as if it had always belonged there, and Ace grasped it like an old friend.

“Ace--”

“Where the hell have you been!”

Of all the parts and pieces of Ace that Sabo remembered, this wasn’t one he’d ever wanted to have turned on him.  With his brows furrowed, his eyes narrowed, his lips pulled back from desperately clenched teeth, Ace’s face eroded into that mask of a scowl he created to protect the fear that erupted when he felt someone deeply important to him become threatened.  Worse still, like a dog cornered, he seemed lost, unsure where to be projecting that mask.  Ace hesitated, the pipe seeming to overbalance him for a half a second before he gripped it in both hands and lunged.

“All this time--”

Sabo held his breath and ducked.  The pipe soared an inch over his head, then spun back around to take him across the shoulders.  It slammed into his open palm; hand stinging, he twisted to mark Ace.

“-- _All this time_!”

Hands alternating along the pipe’s length, the two faced each other, and as Sabo struggled to wrest the weapon from Ace’s grasp, he watched as that facade got knocked loose and fell away.  What was left filling in the creases in Ace’s brow and the lines between his clenched teeth was a hurt Sabo could barely stand to look at.

“We thought you were dead!”

Sabo’s heel caught a loose rock, and he toppled backwards, taking the full brunt of Ace’s weight and pain atop him.

“For nine years…!”

With a grunt, Sabo dug the end of the pipe into the ground, and with that as leverage he heaved himself up and over until he had Ace pinned.  But the burden of his torment still sat within Sabo’s chest as if they hadn’t moved at all.

“I--we-- _Luffy and I_ , we mourned you!  For--” heavy rubber soles kicked at Sabo’s knees “— _nine_ \--” their arms trembled “-- _years_!!” but Sabo pressed down and forced himself to watch the way Ace’s expression crumbled and built back up again, over and over, like years passing in the span of a moment.

“I know.”  The words came out quieter than he meant them to, and as the two watched the air between them they could almost see that acknowledgement drift down to lay overtop Ace’s creased face like a shroud.  “I know, and I’m sorry.”

“If you’re so sorry, why didn’t you come find us!  You let us believe all this time that you…!”

“I didn’t have a choice!”  Sabo pressed the pipe a little harder against Ace’s shoulders, and even as their eyes met he knew how much his words sounded to both their ears like a whined excuse.  “ _Please_ believe me,” he pressed on anyway. “I’d have--…  Ace, you know I’d have come to find you if I could…!”

Ace clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut.  Sabo watched the lump in his throat bob with a hard swallow, and much as he felt like mirroring every action he witnessed, instead the corners of his lips curled up, just a little.

“Since when does a man like Portgas D. Ace cry…?”

The muscles in Ace’s arms tensed, rounding out the thick black letters etched along one of his shoulders.  A quiet, harsh noise escaped his throat, and Sabo had to face the tears streaming down either side of his face and the final desperation with which he spoke.

“It really _is_ you…isn’t it?  S-…”

That jolt dug the crack of a smile into a full-blown fissure.

“… _Sabo_ …”

“Idiot.  Who else would it be?”

Sabo released the pipe and climbed carefully to his feet.  Before he could even reach out, Ace had flung the makeshift weapon away.  He ignored the way it clattered loudly against the cold stone walls and the scrapyard refugees lining them, and busied himself with soaking up the moisture on his face with his forearms.

Ace’s eyes were dry when he accepted Sabo’s hand up, but even as he stood he maintained his grasp and pulled, drawing his friend into the tight embrace of his tattooed arm.  Out of the corner of his eye, Sabo glanced at the crossed out letter marked dark and deep into Ace’s skin, then took a deep breath and tightened his arm around Ace’s back.  He smelled of the sea and of ale and of the mysterious meat the tavern beside them served.

Sabo held on far longer than most friends would, but they had a lot of time to make up, after all, and he didn’t dare pull back before Ace did.  Ace had his neck bowed, his face pressed in the crook of Sabo’s shoulder, and he was taking slow breaths as if the longer he drew them out, the longer the seconds they spent standing there would take to pass.

Somehow, after all this time, Sabo still smelled like home.

When Ace finally pulled back, his grin had lost most of the pain with which he’d stared up at Sabo before, and he no longer clutched at Sabo as if he might at any moment turn to ash and blow away.  They stood facing each other, their hands still clasped together, communicating for a moment only through the words that made up their smiles.

“This okay?”

“Hmm?”

“You being here with me like this.  If you couldn’t find me before…”

Sabo laughed, unaware of how deeply Ace drank in that sound, the call of a bird once thought extinct.

“What’s done is done, I’d say.  Besides, if someone in this town has to know I’m here…”  He offered Ace a small shrug.  “I can’t think of anyone better.”

Ace’s snort couldn’t begin to cover up his pleasure at that, but Sabo did his best to pretend it did.  “You sure didn’t learn to say pretty things like that as a pirate.  Just what the hell have you been doing all this time?”  The question knocked the smile from Sabo’s face like a blow to the jaw.  “Ah—that is, if you…”

“I’m,” Sabo replied, haltingly, “I’ve joined with--…with the Revolutionary Army.”  Watching Ace, he found surprise blossoming across his face, but nothing more, so he forged ahead.  “They were there that night—the night Gray Terminal was burned.  And when I woke up from my boat being shot down, they were treating me on their ship.  I’ve been with them ever since--training, for…”

For what in particular, he still wasn’t quite sure, but Ace spared him the attempt to explain.  He squeezed the hand he was still holding, the surprise having melted back behind the surface of his face.  “Are you happy?”

“Happy?”

“Being a revolutionary.  Are you happy?”

Sabo’s eyebrows furrowed.  “I…  I told you I’d have come find you if I could--”

“I’m not trying to trick you,” Ace laughed. “I just want to know.”

“…Then yeah.”  The answer came more easily than even Sabo had expected.  “Yeah.  I am.”

“Then I’m glad.  It feels…I don’t know.  Fitting.”

“Fitting?”

Ace crouched down and stretched until he could reach Sabo’s hat that had been left on the ground without relinquishing the grip on his hand.  Carefully, he knocked some of the dust from it against his shorts and set it back atop Sabo’s head, but he and it and the fine clothes that had deviated little from those he had worn as a child were still a mess of dirt and hardship.

“Fitting,” he repeated with a nod, as Sabo removed his hat again to peer closely at it, to try to see what he saw.

After a moment, his own lips turned back up into a smile, and he replaced the hat back upon his head.  “What, you saying I couldn’t cut it as a pirate?” he teased.

Ace raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, an exaggerated roll of his shoulders.  “Obviously.  Trying to go out on a boat like that all by yourself?  The revolutionaries were doing you a huge favor, saving you from embarrassing yourself like that.”

“Oh, embarrassing myself!  And you think as second division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates you can make that sort of judgment, do you?”

Ace opened his mouth to shoot back a retort, but his hesitation and open surprise was clear to both of them.

“You knew about that?”

It was Sabo’s turn to shrug, while doing his best impression of Ace’s smug grin.  “Just because I haven’t been able to come meet with you, doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping tabs on you both.  I know more about you than you might think.”

Ace grinned right back.  “And I bet you think that’s impressive, huh?”

Sabo tilted his chin up, just a hair.  “I think it’s pretty impressive.”

“Anyone who’s paid attention to the news in the last few weeks would know that.  What else do you know about me, then?”

“I know when you left home, you started your own crew,” Sabo recited, “just like you said you would.  The Spade Pirates—which managed to get themselves kidnapped and subsequently absorbed into the Whitebeard Pirates less than a year later.”  His grin widened the same amount that Ace’s diminished.  “Sounds like you didn’t start out as all that great a pirate to begin with, either.”

“Oho?”  Ace’s eyebrows furrowed heavily in a way that would look dangerous to anyone who didn’t know him as well as Sabo did, even after all this time.  “You wanna come say that to my face?”

Sabo spared half a glance at their still clasped hands, more for effect than anything else.  When he looked back up, he could not tell whether or not the short space between their faces had become even shorter.

And if he didn’t know better, he’d swear he’d surpassed Ace’s height, just a little, in the last nine years.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what I was speaking to: your face.”  He raised a single eyebrow.  “Is there another face I should be speaking to?  Wouldn’t that be something?—is there a—”

The space between their faces had definitely, definitely diminished.  Sabo was sure when his words wandered from his own mouth and easily got lost in Ace’s, and even when Ace leaned back again he felt as if his entire head had stumbled off out of the alley somewhere.  The grip on his hand had tightened again.  “A-Ace—”

“Sorry.”  Ace glanced away at the shadows lining the side wall of the tavern, his brow furrowed.   He dragged a hand through his hair, pulling thick black locks out of his face.  “Sorry.  It’s been so long--  I wanted to--”

Either time really had slowed down, or Sabo’s training had been more fruitful than Ace could have guessed, but he crossed back over that short gap between them faster than Ace could follow.  Where Ace’s kiss had been hesitant, Sabo’s was sure; he took Ace’s chin in his free hand and held him steady, solidly.  If Ace’s muddled childhood feelings had frozen deep in icy loss, Sabo’s longing had only fed the flame of desperation in the years that had stretched like leagues between them.

Ace’s freckles stood out all the more against the faint pink that rose in his cheeks when he finally pulled back, and his breathing, Sabo saw to his satisfaction, was just a bit unsteady.

“Are you still sorry?”

Dark eyes darted away again, then slowly pulled back to focus somewhere in the vicinity of Sabo’s right ear.  “I wasn’t actually sorry,” Ace muttered.

“I know.”

With his grin askew, Sabo tightened his grip until Ace had to look back at him, gaze unsteady above a clenched jaw.  The hand that still grasped Sabo’s was vibrating finely, and with his eyes still locked on Ace’s, Sabo squeezed.  The pressure drew Ace’s attention downward, not in anxious retreat but a focused, intentional glance.  Sabo’s skin was hidden behind thick gloves, but his hand was warm, his grip solid.  It was not the touch of a ghost.

Finally, Ace relinquished his hand, and curled his own instead once more in the fabric of Sabo’s vest, pushing, pushing, pushing, until the cold, rough rock of the alley wall dug into Sabo’s back and shoulders.  He didn’t care.  The sensations got lost in the tangle of his fingers in Ace’s hair, the shuddering, intermingling beats of their hearts, and the faint, desperate noises that escaped both their lips as they mashed them together.  His hat toppled from his head once more and fell heavily to land in the dust; fear and guilt, hurt and loss went down with it like dead weight.  The only thing there was space for between them now were fractions of their breaths, half-bitten and gasped into each other’s mouths.

In all the years Sabo had spent scouring the news, waiting, hoping, for just one mention of the pirate Ace, the Captain Ace, Portgas D. Ace of East Blue, in all the years he’d carefully hoarded what few clippings he’d found, hiding them out of first shame, then fear, then obligation--in all his wakeful hours alone in his room at the revolutionaries’ HQ, he had hoped but never expected to be here.  Never expected to have that freckled skin so close again to his own, never expected to have those once-clumsy fingers so deftly twining through his loose curls, never expecting to be humming into Ace’s mouth as their lips met and parted again, over and over, a delightful parody of the eternal distance that had kept them from one another for so long.

Ace’s expression relaxed under his ministrations, and the same easy smile colored the kisses they pressed upon each other.  The more he felt Sabo real and solid under his touch, the surer and the freer his movements became.  He would never admit the many nights he’d awoken suddenly from sleep: some dreams, where Sabo was there with him, in a separate lifetime where he’d never allowed Sabo to leave him and Luffy and the Terminal--some nightmares, too, where he’d let all his imaginings of the sinking of Sabo’s tiny ship come haunt him, until he could swear he’d seen it with his own two eyes.  He’d thought they’d end when he left home himself, but there were far too many times Ace was sure a crewmate--Spade and Whitebeard alike--had heard him shouting at ghosts and illusions just before he woke.  He had cried and screamed and toppled trees with his fists, and later he had grit his teeth so hard they nearly cracked, to smother that hope so terminally he’d never have to experience the hurt of seeing Sabo’s face again, only to have it snatched away with the first sun’s rays.  But still the dreams and nightmares had come.

And now here he was.

Ace pulled back, and with the taste of their most recent kiss still dousing his senses he pressed his forehead to Sabo’s, a heady grin splashed across his face.  “I still can’t believe you’re here,” he breathed, his voice all ecstatic relief.

Sabo’s hands slipped from his face and trailed down the golden skin at his sides until they could settle at the small of his back.  That grin was far too precious to cover up.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and this time with Ace’s temper soothed and calm in his grasp, Sabo had time to allow the words to encompass his full and deepest regret. As his thumbs moved in gentle circles against Ace’s skin, the constant motion a reminder of his presence still, his gaze blurred a little, as if wandering back with his thoughts through time.  “I wanted so often to come find you, I never meant--”

The pirate captured the remainder of his words and held them hostage in the miniscule spaces left between them.  “Apologize--later--” he forced out between kisses, and Sabo acquiesced without a fight.  Hands left to roam, they passed through Sabo’s hair, rifled through his collar, teased the knot of his cravat open, taking back up that mantle from the wind that had for so long acted as the touch of the other they had each craved.

Ace’s kisses wandered downward, leaving Sabo’s lips to part, gasping, while the pirate’s found his exposed neck and reclaimed it as his own.  With Sabo’s hands sending thrills up and down his back and his pulse fluttering encouragingly beneath his lips, Ace’s fingers moved on ahead, deftly freeing buttons from their holes, paving a trail for his kisses down Sabo’s chest.

Sabo gasped lightly, and his hands on Ace’s back stopped, fingernails clenching into ink-marked skin just long enough to halt the flow of Ace’s motions.  His voice, when he freed it from his throat, was laced with reluctance but reinforced with the same sense of duty that had kept him from leaving and finding Ace all this time.  “We can’t--we shouldn’t do this here.”

He steeled himself for the dark look that came from dark eyes as Ace tilted his head up to lock their gazes.  “Sabo…” he said, and inside the cloak of frustration Ace threw up around it Sabo could easily hear the core of hesitation and hurt that the pause had already begun to reform in him.

“I _want_ to stay with you,” he insisted, kneading his fists into Ace’s back. “But we can’t stay _here_ , it’s too open.  If someone saw us--”

“ _Sabo_ …”

“I have a room.”  Sabo pulled away and caught Ace’s hands as desperately as he tried to catch his temper.  “Not too far from here.  Come with me.”

The fists in his hands trembled finely.  In Ace’s expression, as Sabo searched it determinedly for signs of resignation, he could make out the tiniest mote of mistrust that may as well have wedged itself into his heart like a warship for how much it hurt.

“ _Stay_ with me.”

Ace’s throat bobbed once as he swallowed, but as Sabo watched, that iota of doubt evaporated like dew under the sun.  “...The old man has business in town,” he muttered at last, and though he drew his gaze away, Sabo’s heart swelled with his victory. “We’ll be here at least a week.”

“They won’t need you?”

“Not unless something goes sour.”  Ace gave a huff of a laugh, and the wry upward turn of a corner of his mouth told Sabo how likely Ace thought that would be.

“Then…?”

“Let’s see this room of yours.”

Ace’s smile grew with only exaggerated reluctance as Sabo pressed a relieved kiss to the corner of it before going to retrieve his hat from the ground once more.  Brushing it off absently, he noted the spots where they’d disturbed the dust and dirt of the alley, following the path of their motions with practiced eyes.  “It just looks like we were fighting…”  Which, he reminded himself, they were.  Satisfied, he crushed his already crumpled hat under his arm and moved to stand by Ace’s side once more.  “Hopefully it won’t cause any undue worry in your crewmates.”

Ace had his arms folded as he waited, exuding impatience both mock and true.  “They know I can take care of myself.  Since when did you become such an important person in the Revolutionary Army that you can’t have your movements tracked?”

Sabo sighed and grasped at Ace’s hand, giving it a brief squeeze.  “My importance right now relies on the fact that no one knows I’m alive,” he murmured, which sounded to Ace more like a reminder to himself than an explanation. Instead of dwelling on it, though, he tilted a grin in Ace’s direction and gestured back out at the mouth of the alley.  “Now let’s see if you’ve managed to learn some stealth in the past nine years, Division Commander.”

Ace elbowed him in the side with a grunt.  “Try me, Revolutionary Boy.”  Sabo, his laughter muffled against the back of a gloved hand, led the way out onto the street.

The rest of the town had grown as dark as the premature blackness of the alley in the time they’d spent otherwise occupied.  The tavern beside them was thus in full swing as they slipped out from beside it.  Ace could hear his crewmates’ voices echoing still from within those walls, and he smiled briefly to himself, knowing they could and would remain there until dawn.  His frequent solo absences in port towns meant he would be missed but not asked after, at least not for a while.  With his hand still tucked firmly around Sabo’s, he followed on quiet feet as they took back streets and narrow corridors between squat stone buildings, communicating only with gestures.  If Ace risked closing his eyes for even a moment, he could easily imagine they were right back on Dawn Island, sneaking through layers of grime and refuse to plunder what riches the Goa Kingdom could not keep safe from their clever little hands.  It wasn’t gold or treasure now that fueled their furtiveness, but a single destination, which sat like a beating heart in a location only Sabo knew, and Ace would gladly, blindly follow him as long as it took to get there.

Quicker than he expected, Sabo slowed to a stop and pulled him around the corner of another stone building.  In this town, insignificant and banal as it was, all the alleys between all the buildings looked more or less the same: built out of the same rock, lined with the same junk, coated over by the same dust.

“There,” Sabo said, pointing his free hand up to a corner window near the back of the building, on the third floor. “I’ll go in and unlock the window, and then you can climb up.”

Ace took a moment to peer at the wide stones; where their roughness had made for an uncomfortable backrest before, they would offer foot- and hand-holds almost too generously.  His right shoulder rose in a cocky shrug.  “Sure.”

“Hmm?  What, no complaints?”

“Why would there be?  If they think you have a guest, I’ll be a liability, right?  Or are you expecting me to complain about climbing in through a window like some secret lover?”  Ace’s grin grew broader as Sabo’s one eyebrow rose higher and higher.  “You don’t think I’ve never done this before, do you?”

In Sabo’s defense, his eyes only widened for a moment or two before he shook his head, lips pulling outward to match Ace’s.  “That’s a story I’d love to hear.  Just wait here a second.”

Ace made a brief but clear show of reluctance when the other’s hand slowly slipped from his.  He stood back with his arms folded as Sabo shook out his hat, placed it atop his head, and strode out of the alley with a single backward glance.

The best part about this town, and one of the main reasons it had been chosen as a rendezvous point in the first place, was that it was populated with the most uninquisitive folk Sabo had ever met.  It was as if their brains had as one agreed to shut off the parts of them that generated curiosity, for Sabo’s quiet greeting to the front desk clerk resulted in no more or less than her usual nod, despite the dust still clinging to his coat at more than conspicuous levels.  The walk to his room was agonizingly slow, as he was sure to take each step at his usual steady pace, but the hand that clutched his key in his pocket grew whiter and whiter in the knuckles at every step.  At last he reached the door, slowing down even further to ensure he didn’t fumble with the key or the lock.  He focused on the brass plate declaring the room number 321 while he steadied his breathing and unlocked the door with as little extraneous noise as possible.  The rooms at this inn were extravagantly priced for such tiny quarters and sparse furniture, but it was more than Sabo needed, and the bed was conspicuously spacious.

Still, Ace managed to drape himself in such a way that he took up most of it.

Sabo slammed the door shut behind him in surprise and regretted it instantly with a deep wince.  “I thought you were going to wait?” he said, fighting the helpless grin threatening to overcome his features and failing spectacularly.

Ace grinned right back, the shadows over his face shifting in the swaying light of the lamp by the bed.  “More noticeable out there, aren’t I?  Besides, why waste time?”

Sabo acquiesced his point with a faint shrug.  Allowing his jaw to form into as large a grin as it pleased, he took his time in strolling over to rest a hip against the mattress and setting aside his hat once more.  Ace’s fingers, trailing off the edge of the bed, grasped what they could of the fabric of his pants, and that was all the push Sabo needed to kick off his boots and throw a leg over Ace’s hips.

“We’re good here, then…?”

“No more waiting,” Sabo promised them both, and he leaned down to smooth the hesitation from Ace’s frown beneath his lips.  As if a switch had been thrown, Ace’s hands thawed and regained their momentum, returning to fiddle blindly with Sabo’s many collars and buttons.  His breath grew hot on Sabo’s skin the more Ace exposed of it, and his kisses left Sabo’s arms shaking and weaker than they’d ever felt as they held him up.  He pulled away to let his jacket and vest pool about his hips, and he paused a moment with the thumb of his glove in his teeth, shuddering as the hunger and the intensity of Ace’s focus seared across the skin beneath his shirt in a peculiarly pleasant way.

His belt came away as if by the hands of a ghost, while Sabo’s gloves fell each with a solid thump to the floor.  He leaned forward again, and his hands were rough on either side of Ace’s face, but Ace’s attention remained on Sabo’s eyes, the way they stared into his own as he hovered just inches away.  He seemed to be looking for something, the same way Ace had focused not long ago on that scarred face, trying to mesh his memory of a child’s visage with that of the man who’d stood real and solid and alive before him.

At last, Sabo ducked his head, and trembling lips grazed across the galaxy of freckles along Ace’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose, pausing at the corner of one eye.  Ace stopped, too, his hands halfway through the last button of his shirt.  Something warm dripped onto the side of his forehead and slid away into his hair.

“I missed you so much…”

Ace felt the words against his skin more than he heard them.  His hands took the button out with them when they fell away.

“I know I left you both thinking I was dead.  But knowing you were out there somewhere--sometimes we passed so close to each other that I could have...  I’d see your face in the news, a town or two away from where we had been, and I would just--...”

Ace’s hands slid up, up, against his neck, thumbs gently pressing against the backs of his ears.  When Sabo pulled back to look at him, he had his jaw clenched in defense against the tears that threatened to follow their predecessors soaked into Ace’s scalp.  “It doesn’t matter now,” he said, and when he pulled back from kissing the tension out of Sabo’s jaw he was grinning, the kind of grin Sabo had so often gotten lost in as a child, the worries of their world temporarily drowned out by the brightest of suns.  He mirrored it slowly, carefully, and the longer they grinned at each other the less fragile the expression became on both their faces.  Once they’d grown strong enough to survive on their own, Sabo leaned back in, restarting the chain of lingering kisses that he’d interrupted.

Amenable were the lips that met him in return, and warm were the hands that slipped inside the collar of Sabo’s shirt, pushing it down to join the rest of the clothing collecting behind him.  Sabo’s grin drifted behind his kisses as he thought of the blurry, half-charred photos of the newly-christened Fire Fist Ace he’d begun amassing long ago, and of the physical heat he’d been lucky enough to not have had to contend with during their brief bout in the alley.  Fingers grazed quickly over his chest with the momentum of years of Ace’s desperation, before his motions, too, came up short, sliding to a stop amongst lines and crags of gnarled skin.  His hands curled as if he could grab hold of them and tear them away like a plaster, but instead his knuckles rested against the scars as Sabo leaned back, letting the dim light of the room cast dark tongues of shadow over his mottled arms and torso.

_A single cannonball, took it right out!  It went down in flames…_

Uncurling his fists, Ace’s fingertips traced the lines on his skin like courses mapped on a sea chart.  They extended around to his back on either side, along both his arms and hands, up into his face and down past the hemline of the pants to which Ace had not yet given his attention.  The reality of their existence under his touch brought Ace up short, as if the mere fact that Sabo still lived somehow meant that the report had been wrong, that there had never been a tiny, solitary ship burned mercilessly upon the waves by some cruel, entitled monster of a human being.

Sabo waited patiently while Ace’s touch passed over the numbed, corded skin that had wrapped itself like bandages over seared nerves.  His own fingers merely turned absent circles against the unmarred skin at Ace’s sides as he allowed the other time to process the wounds that had become, for him, quiet, daily reminders of where he had been, and why he was where he was now.

“Do they still hurt?”

Sabo’s chest puffed out briefly while he released a dryly amused breath.  “It’s been nine years,” he replied, which was and wasn’t really an answer at all.

Finally, he reached up to pull Ace’s hands away from where they had lingered over the smattering of scars and pockmarks Sabo wore beneath his clothes, and gently placed them instead against the fabric of his pants.  Then he closed the gap between them once more, and Ace, relieved, dove into that kiss without a second’s more hesitation.  Beneath his lips, the tightness in Sabo’s expression relaxed, and with more genuine amusement he let a fraction of a laugh pass into Ace’s open mouth.

With hands steadying him on either hip, Sabo leaned forward, pressing his cool skin against Ace’s living warmth, fingers finding and fumbling with the engraved A in the broad belt buckle that still sat sharp and cold between them.  It came away faster than Sabo’s had, leaving Ace chuckling against his mouth.  Thumbs hooked in belt loops, he heaved; Sabo’s world spun, and he found himself on his back on the bed with Ace grinning down at him like a dimmed sun, knees now on either side of Sabo’s narrow hips.

“Don’t rush so much.  I want to take my time.”  Ace pressed his lips to the right side of Sabo’s neck, where his skin was healthier, untouched by old wounds.  The hot breath against Sabo’s skin sent pleasant shivers down his back, cutting off half-thought out protests.  “We’ve got a lot of it to make up for.”

“ _Ace_ ,” Sabo hissed, the teeth grazing against his unscarred skin turning his voice to gravel.  Ace jerked his hips forward, trapping the hands aiming for the button of his shorts between their bare stomachs.

“Lost some restraint in that army of yours, huh?  Since when am I the patient one?”

“I don’t want to wait anymore.”  Sabo managed a smirk up at him.  “I can see from your face you don’t either.”

“Smartass.”

“I’m right, though.”

“First time for everything.”

The strength of Ace’s grin caused the same one to come trickling back onto Sabo’s face, until the force of their kisses had their teeth clinking against each other’s like an impatient diner’s silverware against his empty plate.  Ace arched his back to gain leverage, and even as he pressed Sabo deeper into the mattress, he set their hands free.  As once a pair of young boys had raced each other over piles of refuse and hills lush with vegetation, their hands now competed in speed and dexterity, divesting each other of their remaining clothing, grasping fabric as desperately as they’d once grasped gold.  The mattress was thick--the walls, even more so, and they held both men and their cries alike within their boundaries, keeping time and responsibility for once at bay.  Here in this room there was no interest in either, and Ace and Sabo filled the remaining void with gasps and moans and touches that grappled with the past and came out triumphant.

When finally their frantic motions slowed to a shudder and stopped, Ace settled himself down heavily at Sabo’s side, and with arms that felt weak with relief and exertion and pleasure he pressed Sabo’s face to his chest and wrapped himself around that scarred body as tightly as he could.  Sabo waited, listening to Ace’s breathing and heartbeat as they slowed from their frenetic pace while he felt his own do the same.  About the blanket Ace had transformed himself into, Sabo wisely said nothing, and only nestled deeper into the grip that held him so desperately.  But his eyes would not close, and even as he watched the stub of a candle burn out beside them and felt Ace’s panting slow, his own heart did not settle.

“Ace.”

The thigh against his hip shifted minutely.  “...Mn?”

Sabo swallowed.  “You have to know, I...I’m leaving here.  In two days, I have to go.”

“Mm.”

“Did you hear me?”

“...Yeah.”  Ace let out a breath that barely ruffled Sabo’s damp hair.  “Two days.”

Silence followed.  Sabo squeezed his eyes shut against the dark.  “You’re asleep right now, aren’t you?”

The faint scent of smoke and paraffin dispersed from the small room.  Sabo sighed and settled himself within Ace’s grasp, but though his heartbeat gradually slowed again, it left behind a faint ache in his chest.

 

 

* * *

 

_-scars that words have carved-_

Cool night air.  Fingernails on glass.  Behind heavy curtains, a light flickered to life in the room.

Sabo’s face appeared, first astonished, then worried.  “What are you doing here?”

The grin on the other side of the window never waned.  “I came to bring you back!”

“Back?”

“Back home!”

Sabo looked down at the hand held out to him, his round face scrunched up.  “Ace…”

“Hurry up, Sabo!  Luffy’s down there keeping watch, and you know how awful he is at--”

“Ace!”

“What?”

With his lower lip firmly planted between his teeth, Sabo slid his eyes back towards the door behind him.

“Don’t tell me…”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t _tell me that_!”

The door seemed to float away into the darkness of the room, but still Sabo kept looking back at it.  The windowsill beneath Ace’s arm began to crumble away.

“Don’t tell me you can’t!  You don’t _belong_ here!”

A great wind picked up, and Sabo’s fine, flawless jacket began to disintegrate into the air.  His hat and his hair and his skin followed, leaving Ace with a ghost of the image of his eyes as he turned back, and an echo of “I can’t...I can’t...I can’t…”

“ _Sabo!!_ ”

Ace woke wide-eyed, jerking to life in one quick, full-bodied twitch.  The sunlight took his moment of weakness to attack, assaulting his retinas with the intensity of a new morning.  He squeezed his eyes shut and attempted to settle himself, to remind himself as always that those nocturnal visions were simply extravagant lies.  And that this time, they were even more so, for last night had proven almost a decade of such nightmares to be nothing more than mere paranoid falsehoods.  Sabo was _alive_ , he recalled as he slowly released a breath and ventured to open his eyes.  And not only was he alive, he was _here_ , here with Ace, in this very room.

The room was empty.  There was nothing but air within his embrace.

“Sabo.”  The urgent whisper bounded around the room like an echo, peering into dusty dark corners, but the more Ace’s eyes adjusted to the presence of the light, the more he was sure Sabo was gone.

Something strong and sharp reached into his chest and gripped his heart: _had he ever really been here?_  Or was last night simply a longer, deeper dream than any his subconscious had presented before, set off by the vision of a perhaps familiar but entirely irrelevant hat?  Just what had he drank last night in that tavern?  Or eaten?

Holding his head, Ace stumbled to his feet, nearly tripping over his own shorts that had fallen to the floor beside the bed.  Sabo’s clothes, if they had truly been here in the first place, were gone.  He wasn’t sure which option was more worrisome.

“Fuck,” he muttered, and sank until he was sitting again with his back up against the edge of the mattress.  The vaguely disoriented feeling that had extended through the end of his dream clung to him like wet fabric, sitting somewhere in his forehead, blurring his vision despite how desperately he wanted to shake it.  If Sabo really _had_ been here, he couldn’t be too far by now.  Ace had to go and find him.  And if he hadn’t been…

Ace groaned.  He didn’t want to think about that, about what that meant.  He was sure his heart couldn’t take any more squeezing.  He pulled his knees to his chest and prepared himself to continue on with the process of standing back up.

“--Ah.  Good morning to you, too.”

Ace’s head shot up.  The door had opened without his noticing, and beneath the brim of his hat, Sabo’s eyes were wide with what looked like pleasant surprise.  He carried a full sack of something in the hand that was not resting on the doorknob; the rest of him was wrapped back up in the clothing that had gone absent from the room, while Ace was…

“Come inside, you’ll get a better look,” he offered, spreading his knees wider.

Sabo laughed and shook his head.  With the door firmly shut behind him, he dropped his hat and the sack on the room’s only table and leaned down to unlace his boots.  “Should I bother asking why you’re on the floor?”

“No,” Ace said decisively, and as if to further put off the idea, he used the bed for support and climbed back to his feet.  His shorts remained where they were.   “So...where have you been?”

“Getting breakfast,” Sabo answered brightly.   Only when he opened the bag up all the way did Ace’s nose finally pick up the briny scent of smoked fish, the mildly sharp smell of some soft, creamy cheese, and, beneath it all, the subtle layer of freshly baked bread.

“...Oh.”

Sabo raised an eyebrow over at him before producing a knife from somewhere within his jacket, and began slicing through the hunk of bread.  “What?” he asked. “Did you think I’d--”

“What?  No!”

Sabo didn’t even need to look up from what he was doing to imagine the posture Ace had assumed, with his arms crossed and his back slouched, his lips set into a stubborn grimace.  It was just that, in his mind’s eye, it was a child doing those things.  Upon looking up, he saw that Ace had perfected the stance over the years--but it was no more believable, even so.

“Ace, I’m still here.”

“I know that.”

“Besides, all my stuff is still all over this room.”

“I _know_ th--”  Ace straightened a little to glance around; indeed, there was a large pack still sitting against the far wall, and several bound books and other small indications of Sabo’s long-term presence littered the floor.  Even his Den Den Mushi was still napping on the corner of the table he was now using to prepare breakfast.

“Mm.”

“Don’t you smile at me like that!”

“Like what?”

“Like _that_ , like you think it’s funny that I--”

“Maybe I do.”

“Asshole.”

“You don’t want breakfast, then?” Sabo grinned. “It’d be a shame to have to eat all of this myself.”

“Give me that!” he said, snatching the offered slice of bread out of Sabo’s hand.

“You gonna eat like that?”  Sabo tsked.  “Pirates have such poor manners these days.”

“You _want_ me to put my pants back on?”

“Mmm…”  Sabo glanced aside to where Ace was spreading a glob of cheese onto his bread with a finger.  “Not really.”

Ace snorted and topped off his creation with a generous portion of delicately sliced pink fish.  “Woulda been nice if you’d woken me up, though.”

“Sorry.  I thought you could use the sleep.  Besides, it’s not like you could have come with me to buy all this.”

Ace’s eyebrows furrowed as he glanced up, and Sabo chuckled.

“I can’t just go eat and run like we used to.”

“Shame,” Ace said, and took an enormous bite of bread and fish. “Bet this cost a fortune.”

Sabo shrugged, and offered him a wry smile.  “That’s part of the reason why I can’t.”

The two sat side by side on the bed, allowing the process of assembling and eating breakfast to occupy their mouths and hands.  With the door closed again, preserving them both inside, time seemed to retreat once more as both lingered on the meal and on their own thoughts.

“You said you’ve been keeping tabs on us,” Ace said, once he’d finished his third slice of bread to Sabo’s two. “Have you heard anything about Luffy?”

Sabo shook his head halfway through spreading cheese.  “Not really.  He hasn’t really had a chance to make a name for himself back home--and it’s not like I can just send a message to anyone to ask after him.”  He paused before taking a bite and tilted his head in Ace’s direction.  “Have you?”

Sabo wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved when Ace shook his head in return.  “Nothing much one way or the other.”  He leaned back on his hands, gaze wandering between the wall and Sabo as he ate.  “I know he’s still training.”

“He’ll be heading out next year, huh…”

“That idiot?  There’s no way he’d put it off.”

After a pause, Sabo glanced back at him with a knowing smile Ace tried to convince himself was the only thing he _hadn’t_ missed.  “Oh?  Was that fondness I heard in your voice just now?”

“Sabo--”

“Have you come to care for our dear younger brother after all this time?”

“Eat shit,” Ace said, with neither the vehemence nor the scowl to back it up.  He at least focused his grin at the ceiling instead of at the self-satisfied smile beside him.  “He was all I had left.  ‘Course I learned to care about the little snot.”

Sabo finished up his third piece of bread with the smile still plastered on his face, much to Ace’s consternation.  “I’m glad,” he said, focusing his wistful expression at the spot on the wall where Ace also looked.  He could well picture their younger brother sitting against it with his straw hat perched atop his head as always, grinning his rubber-wide grin at them both.  The thought filled him with a strangely warm, bubbly sensation, and his heart felt lighter for its buoyancy.

“Someday,” he couldn’t help but say, “the three of us will meet again, together.  Just like we said.”

“He’s gotta catch up with us first.”

“Think he will?”

Ace turned away from the imaginary Luffy against the wall across from them to find Sabo glancing aside at him, still smiling.  He glowered unconvincingly.

“He trained hard after...after you left.”  Even Ace could tell his own pride was shining through his fragile, brusque demeanor and didn’t bother trying to stop it.  “He’ll be here in no time.”

Sabo let out a satisfied breath and leaned back on his hands to match Ace.  “Soon, then.”

“Yeah.  Soon.”

Outside, the sun had risen to its mid-morning seat to beat its fists weakly against the curtains drawn out of necessity over their little room.  Ace and Sabo broke the remaining heel of bread between the two of them and laid back on a bed of mussed sheets and the occasional crumb.

“Shouldn’t I tell him?”

“Hmm?”  Sabo picked up his head just enough to find Ace shooting a troubled scowl at the ceiling.

“I’m bound to see Luffy first, aren’t I?  Especially if you’re still incognito by next year.”

“...That’s likely.”

“So shouldn’t I tell him?  That you’re alive?”

“No.”

“No?” Ace repeated in disbelief.  He raised himself up onto an elbow.  To his surprise, a ghost of panic dashed across Sabo’s features.  “He’s your little brother, Sabo!  He should know--”

“Just like you should have known, yes--” Sabo cut in, pressing a hand firmly on Ace’s shoulder “--b-but you know how he is, he’s an awful liar, if someone asked him point-blank--”

“Alright, alright.  I get it.”

“I’ll find him,” Sabo swore, touching his forehead briefly to Ace’s shoulder to soothe the tension there. “When I can, I promise, I’ll--...”

Sabo trailed off, and their words drifted out behind them like a ship’s wake.  The longer the pause that stretched between them and the conversation, the less it riled the waters around them.  Ace sighed; Sabo’s furrowed brow smoothed out against his skin.

“Then I hope I’m around when Luffy finds out you’re alive.”  Pulling the hem of Sabo’s jacket over his right arm, Ace rearranged his own expression back into a broad grin. “The look on his face’ll be priceless.”

After a brief pause, Sabo chuckled.  “Can’t possibly beat the look on yours.”

“Yeah, yeah.  He _probably_ won’t try to kill you.”

“That’s ‘cause he’ll actually believe it’s me, idiot.”

“Never thought his gullibility would come in handy.”

Feeling another tug on his jacket, Sabo glanced down to where Ace was attempting to join him in its confines as they once did with the enormous cast-off clothing they used to find buried in the dumps of Gray Terminal.  “Cold?” he asked with a slow grin.

“What do you think?”

“Have you considered putting on some clothes?”

“I had a better solution in mind.”

Sabo laughed.  “Does it involve abducting my coat?  What a shameless pirate you’ve turned out to be.”

“Care to propose a third option, O Brilliant Revolutionary?”

“Hmm…  I think something’s coming to me…”

“Better think faster.”

“Or else?”

“Or else I _will_ start abducting your clothes,” Ace threatened, sliding the knot out of his cravat with deft fingers. “Piece by piece.”

Sabo’s coat came away in a flurry of fabric.  “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“You won’t put up a fight?”

“My clothing and I go willingly.”

“Smart lads.”

Ace laughed into the closures of his shirt as he exposed them, and Sabo pressed a grin into his cool, bare shoulder.  Together, they rejected the warmth of the day outside their window and sank into that of their own making.

 

* * *

 

_-voice for a silent plea/how you fit into me-_

In the dark and the chill the sun left behind, Ace’s breath left invisible puffs of warmth against Sabo’s skin every time he lifted his lips between kisses.  He’d been hard at work all day, mapping the landscape of scars Sabo’s explosive escape had left behind.  By now, given a pencil and some paper, he could have drawn a decently accurate chart of them with his eyes closed.

The worst cluster of them had centered around his left shoulder, too high to have threatened his heart, but bad enough that Ace’s touch disappeared while he turned his attention to that craggy part of him.  Sabo’s eyes opened gradually, his hand pausing where it had been running slowly through dark hair.  He let out a breath, mingled with the single syllable of his brother’s name.

“Mmm?” Ace replied absently, unwilling at the moment to allow his lips to deviate too far from their task.

“...I need to tell you something.”

The hesitation in Sabo’s voice did not seem to break through Ace’s consciousness enough to worry him, or else the pirate didn’t consider it to be a matter of concern as of yet.  Whichever the case, he didn’t pause or falter in his movements until his lips hit unmarred skin, and Sabo shook his shoulder with gentle urgency.

“I’m listening.”

A frustrated noise rumbled through Sabo’s throat; feeling it through the thin skin of his neck, Ace finally stopped, but did not pull away.

“I’m working with Dragon.”

“Yeah.”

“ _Monkey D._ \--”

“I know who Dragon is.”

So close to Sabo’s neck, Ace could hear the sound of him swallowing at a lump lodged in his throat.

“Am I supposed to be surprised?  The revolutionaries are _his_ army, we’ve known that for years.”

“Not just _for_ him, _with_ him.”

“Is there a difference?”

“There is.  I ran into him at Gray Terminal, the night of the fire.  He was there when I woke up on their ship.  He offered me a spot in his army himself.  He’s been...he’s been looking after me.”

Sabo’s last three words could barely be called a whisper.  If Ace had been any further away, he never would have heard them.

He turned the words over in his head, but never shifted or lifted his weight from atop Sabo.  “You sound guilty,” he said at last, his voice carefully level.  The silence from below him served as his confirmation.  “Is this why you didn’t want me to tell Luffy anything?”

Sabo shifted anxiously below him, until finally Ace rolled over to lie beside him on his back.

“Your father was a heartless bastard,” Ace said.

Sabo scowled in confusion.  When he turned his head to look at Ace, he found the other staring intently upward, his face buried in the room’s thick layer of darkness.

“But that son he adopted--they worked well together, didn’t they?”

Unable to stop himself, Sabo snorted.  “Yeah.”  His voice was rough from being dragged over the lump in his throat.  “You could say that.”

Ace shrugged.  Though his voice had been steady all this time, it was a hardened expression that he projected up at the ceiling.  “Sometimes that’s how it has to work.  Maybe you needed what Dragon could give you--maybe you still do.  But Luffy didn’t.”

Sabo filled the silence that followed with one long, drawn-out breath.   “Because he had us,” he finished quietly.

“That’s right.”

Outside their little room, the cries of the late-night revelers, the crash of the ocean on the shore, the calls of night birds and the chirps of nocturnal creatures swirled together into a thick fog of noise that could not penetrate their walls, but hung like dense netting around them: waiting, but not daring to enter.  In the quiet that remained, Sabo’s now steadier breaths were like shouts, Ace’s stillness even louder yet.

“He’s the reason I haven’t been able to come see you,” Sabo admitted, his own words worrying his brow. “I think he thinks you’d be a distraction.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Ace’s bark of a laugh was equal parts sarcasm and mirth.  “He wouldn’t be wrong, then.”

“I guess not.”

“When we were kids,” Ace said, “you wanted to leave because you wanted more freedom.  That’s what being pirates was all about for us.  Do you remember that?”

Glancing aside at him, Sabo nodded, though the room’s shadows swallowed the motion.  “I do.”

“Not much freedom to be found in the Revolutionary Army, either, is there?”

For a while, the corners of Sabo’s lips tugged downward in response, though this time he could not detect any sort of judgment in Ace’s words.  “No,” he agreed easily. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

“You really would’ve made a shitty pirate, you know that?”

For a silent half-second, his declaration caught Sabo off-guard, like a stray, accidental swing of a sword.  Then, finally, the bubble of silence that had expanded around them became too great, too large, and the tip of that blade made up of Ace’s words not only popped but shattered it.  Side by side on a too-large bed in a too-small room, Ace and Sabo dissolved into laughter, each holding his stomach as he gasped for breath.  This close together, even in such darkness, they could make out each other’s identically grinning faces through vision blurred by merriment’s tears.

Eventually the need for breath overrode their amusement, and for a while both grew quiet but for the desperate gasping of air into their lungs.  Much like the time they had spent together as children, Ace thought, their laughter had felt like an eternity, and was at the same time far, far too brief.  In the darkness, he felt Sabo’s scarred hand seeking his; lacing their fingers together one after the other, he held on tightly, and didn’t let go.

“I didn’t decide to join them right away,” Sabo said, sending his words up like an offering to fill the silence of the room. “I knew I couldn’t go home after all that, but no one ever forced me to stay.”

“Why did you, then?”

“Ultimately, it was something Dragon said to me while I was still recovering.  When I met him that night, before I even knew who he was or that there was such a thing as the Revolutionary Army, I remember telling him how ashamed I was of where I’d come from, of the things the people who brought me into this world had done, the things I could easily have been raised to do without a second thought.”  Ace’s grip, briefly, grew stronger in response to the shakiness his voice had taken on.  Sabo squeezed back.  “You and Luffy accepted me despite where I came from, but he...Dragon was the first person who really... _listened_ , and understood what I was feeling.  He saw I couldn’t just dismiss that guilt, and he didn’t try to make me.

“And while I lay there,” Sabo continued, “all wrapped up in bandages, he took care to explain why he had formed the Army, told me about towns on islands all across the seven seas that suffered under the World Government’s thumb like the people of the Gray Terminal did--and worse.  Generations of slaves suffering with no hope in sight; people who don’t even realize they’re slaves, working to further their own slow demise without knowing it.  People who beat at a door made of solid rock their entire lives without ever guessing that there are people on the other side laughing when their hands start to bleed and break.  He told me that if I couldn’t forgive myself for being born under nothing but a fortunate star, then my penance, if I wanted it, could be to try and undo what harm had been done by those whose blood I carry.”  He paused to take a breath--a little wobbly, but steadier than before.  “Maybe before that conversation, I could have grown into a decent pirate in time.  But not afterwards.”

Into the silence that followed, Ace injected a low whistle, and a faint rustling indicated he was shaking his head slowly, trying to take in all he had heard.  “Geez…  Sabo, listen, I’m sorry if I--”

“No, don’t be.  You had every right to be angry, and hurt.  There was a lot you didn’t know.”

“Yeah, but…  Thank you.  For…”

“Yeah.  Thank you, too.”  Sabo turned onto his side, his free hand reaching up slowly until it could successfully land on Ace’s cheek.  “I want you--and Luffy--to become great pirates someday, and to keep fighting for your freedom.  But I have to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves.”

Nodding, Ace followed Sabo’s guidance and shifted until he could press his face against the labyrinth of scars spanning Sabo’s chest.  “Then you just worry about that for now,” he murmured, listening to the frantic heartbeat slow against his ear. “I’ll keep watch over Luffy for the both of us, until you can too.”

With another deep breath, Sabo settled around Ace, clutching him tightly in both arms with his face buried in black waves of hair.  His “Thank you” nearly got lost in the encroaching darkness, but Ace felt it vibrating against his skin.

“And Sabo?”

“Hmm?”

“That’s a good thing you’re doing.  Keep at it.”

Sabo murmured a faint, unintelligible noise into Ace’s hair, then left a kiss there for him to find later.  Even as they drifted off, Sabo’s grip on him never slackened, and Ace’s sleep that night remained mercifully dreamless.

 

* * *

 

_-scars that silence carved-_

Sunlight.  Ace groaned, eyelids battling against the intrusive brightness, and threw an arm over his face to block it out.  There was a pillow up against his chest where Sabo had been.  More breakfast, he thought.  He turned and buried his face into it.  Darkness again.

When he awoke a second time, the light was of a different quality: older, deeper, more subtle.  Still, Ace groaned and had to drag his fists across his eyes several times before they would remain open.  There was no smell of breakfast.

Had he marked the time wrong?

Ace sat up, still rubbing at his eyes.  It was hard to tell through the curtains, but the light was definitely closer to noon than it had been when he’d awoken the first time.  Surely he’d be back by now.  Unless…

With a final squeeze of his eyelids, Ace forced his gaze wide.  Definitely no sign of Sabo, _or_ his clothes.  So he must have gone out.  But then…

Ace’s attention fell to the floor.  His own shorts, which had been laying there for over a day now, kicked out of the way as needed, were alone there with the dust.

The pack by the door: gone.

The Den Den Mushi, the remains of their meals from the previous day that had been left on the table by the bed…

Ace felt as if his heart had stopped.  In place of all these things, as if to ensure he knew he hadn’t been dreaming the past two days, sat a small, folded white piece of paper.

_Ace, Luffy…  You weren’t hurt in the fire, were you?_

“No,” Ace whispered, dread filling his veins with uncomfortable heat.  He didn’t remember buckling his clothing back on or making sure he had the right shoe on the right foot, but before he knew it he had the unopened note clutched in his hand and had left the room far behind.

In the daylight, the alley Sabo’s window had looked out into wasn’t any more memorable than it had been at night, but Ace barely had time to notice it as he dropped into the alley and dashed into the street.  He didn’t know what he expected, Sabo must have been long gone by now, but still…

But still, Ace’s feet carried him to a short cliff that barely managed to overlook the town’s small port.  Little room remained where the _Moby Dick_ hadn’t been docked, but Ace’s dark eyes scanned the waters nervously, for--

For what?

Ace crouched down in the dirt, then sat back heavily when it was clear his body wasn’t prepared for that kind of balance.  What was he looking for?  The Revolutionary Army’s ship, which he’d never seen before and which, surely, was much better at hiding than he was giving it credit for?  Or was he looking instead, desperately, for a tiny makeshift boat that he’d only ever seen in his nightmares, burning, burning, burning down to the sea?

A wordless shout echoed from atop the cliff, giving several townspeople on the docks cause for brief concern, at least until it faded away.

Ace’s hand clenched into a fist, crumpling the letter he held, still unopened.  For a moment, he hesitated, staring at its ruined corners peeking out from within the cage of his fingers.  He thought of the sun burning his retinas as it forced his eyes open that morning, of the corner of the bed he’d run into on his way to the window, the way the drop from the third story had stung--still stung--the soles of his feet through his boots.

This wasn’t a dream.  Whatever was in this letter...whatever had happened, would not go away if he didn’t read it.

Trembling hands carefully smoothed out the paper, and then, shakier still, they unfolded it.  The letter bore neither salutation nor valediction.

> _There’s not enough time in the world to properly apologize for having to leave you with this note.  For what it’s worth: I’m sorry.  I had to leave sooner than I’d expected.  By the time you read this, I’ll probably be long gone.  I don’t think I have to remind you that you mustn’t look for me, but just in case...well, there it is._
> 
> _Just like I shouldn’t have to convince myself that I shouldn’t wake you up so I can say all this in person, but here I am anyway. ~~It would be so easy to~~  It would just make leaving that much harder.  I’m afraid he’s right about you.  About me.  So I can’t.  I have to leave you with this instead.  I hope you can forgive me for that someday._
> 
> _If we’re not lucky enough to cross paths again like this, I don’t know how long it’ll be until I can see you.  Until then, keep your promises to me, as I’ll keep mine to you.  I’ll be watching for news of you both, to see where your freedom takes you.  Take care_

Ace read the note four times.  At first, he merely skimmed it, looking for words to pop out at him as troubling or cause for concern.  When his inquiry was satisfied, he took it properly, word after word, and then read it slower still digging for hidden meanings he knew from the beginning were not there.  His fourth read-through was accomplished with his eyes closed, tracing the words he’d already committed to memory with the pads of his fingers, trying to imagine how Sabo looked while he sat penning them.  In his mind’s eye he saw the pack already full of books and papers sitting at his feet while his Den Den Mushi chirped impatiently beside the half-written note.  Every once in a while he would become at a loss for words and glance over at Ace’s sleeping form, convinced this would all come to him easier if he could just say what he needed to say out loud.

The fantasy dissolved as Ace’s eyes opened again to the stark reality of the written note still in his hand.  Briefly, he thought about burning it, for surely it would have been safer for someone in Sabo’s position not to have a note he’d penned existing in the world.  But, as he gave it a fifth and final glance, he determined that Sabo had written it specifically so that he could keep it with him, full of meanings known only to them, details glossed heavily over.  From an outsider’s perspective, if he squinted hard enough, the note might even look like a message left by a one-night-stand that had gone better than expected.

The thought caused a small smile to form on Ace’s lips for as long as it took him to refold the note, pocket it, and climb back onto his feet.  By the time he began walking, it had faded again.

From the cliff where he’d stood looking out at the harbor, there was no easy path to the docks, but that had never stopped Ace before.  Steadily, he began scaling down the short, rocky cliff, ignoring the way the scrubby, thorny plants growing out the sides tore at his skin.  Any wounds they managed to cause would heal easily and quickly, and would leave no scars.

Sabo’s note, while safely in his pocket, echoed loudly in his ears, the words as well-remembered as those from another note, a lifetime ago, that had seared themselves into his brain.  Anger and hurt stirred a foul brew together in his chest despite how staunchly he tried to shut them out.  No matter how well he understood Sabo’s actions or reasoning, no matter how much sense he had to admit to himself they made, those feelings still bubbled under the surface of his skin, hot as magma.

A small but thick copse of trees separated him from the docks, and despite the spread of the same spiny plants across the gnarled roots at his feet, he stepped right through, taking the most direct route.  Under the shade of the trees, even the high noon sun got tangled and lost in the leaves, and the coolness of the shade slowly soothed him.  For now, he ought not to focus on the words Sabo had written so hurriedly he hadn’t even had time to dot the last period of his last sentence before folding it up and leaving it to be found.  Rather, as he wove his way through the dense wood, Ace worked on committing to memory everything Sabo had said in the last two days, words and explanations he’d probably been working through painstakingly for the last nine years.

_If someone in this town has to know I’m here, I can’t think of anyone better._

_I’m sorry.  I wanted so often to come find you._

_I missed you._

Ace emerged back out into the sun again, the _Moby Dick_ sitting shining and enormous and towering over all other vessels in that tiny harbor.  After even the brief chill of the shade, the sun finally felt good and warm on his skin again, and though he fought it for a moment or two, he soon gave into the smile that split across his face.

_Someday, the three of us will meet again, together.  Just like we said._

“Was that one of your promises, Sabo?” Ace murmured to himself, rounding the corner to where his crew’s ship was docked. “I’m holding you to that.”

“Oi, is that Ace?”

“Still alive, Commander?”

“What do _you_ think?” Ace returned, and clambered up the ladder on the side of the ship to the deck, where many of his crewmates were killing time between duties.

“Kept this safe for you.”  The easy words came accompanied by a grin from the sleepy-eyed man who came up next to him, and the solid weight of his hat being returned to its rightful place upon his head.  “Have a good time?”

“Thanks.  I did, in fact,” Ace said, elbowing Marco in return for his good-natured ribbing. “Everything’s fine here?”

“Everything’s going according to plan with the old man’s errand, but it’ll be a couple more days ‘til we ship out.  In case you were wondering.”

Ace snorted in response to Marco’s heavily exaggerated wink, his shoulders rolling into a grandiose shrug.  “Reckon I’ve squeezed just about all the excitement this town has to offer out of it already.  I think I’ll stick around from now on.”

“Oho?  Care to share with the rest of us, Commander?”

Ace grinned.  “Sorry Teach.  That ship’s already sailed, I’m afraid.”  And, with a quick adjustment to the brim of his hat, he gave a nod to his crewmates and made his way down to his bunk.

“Don’t go too far!  Lunch soon,” Marco called after him, to which Ace replied with a grateful wave.

Though he passed several men on his way, the bunk area itself was nearly empty.  When Ace sat in his hammock, he turned his back to the stragglers and set his hat upside down in his lap.  With deft fingers, he plucked the crumpled note from within his pocket, folded it up even smaller, and slid it into the tiny pouch sewn painstakingly into the inside of his hat to join its fellow.  Oddly, when he set the whole thing back on his head, the minor extra weight seemed to have helped balance it out, and it rested more securely in place.

With one more deep breath, Ace rose back to his feet and joined his crewmates in heading back above deck.  In the distance, the deep, rumbling laughter of their adoptive father could be heard as he approached his ship.  Ace’s grin, which had never entirely faded since he’d come below deck, returned in all its brightness and glory.

_I want you--and Luffy--to become great pirates someday, and to keep fighting for your freedom.  But I have to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves._

The sun shone warm and golden on his skin when he reemerged from below deck, and, the closer he got to the long tables set out to feed their enormous crew, the louder the conversation and grunts and laughter rang cheerily in his ears.  Out over the starboard rail, the sea was as blue and endless as ever.

_Ace, I’m still here._

Fingers briefly brushing the rail, Ace spared one more glance out at the horizon, then turned and headed to the center deck to join his crewmates once more.


End file.
